Fargo Representative Jim Kasper says Common Core education standards are not good enough for students in North Dakota.
The House Education Committee heard testimony on Kasper’s bill, which would withdraw North Dakota from the federal Common Core education standards, and establish a committee to develop standards of its own. Kasper says the committee would be finalized in 2017 – and in the interim, school districts, school boards and teachers could educate their students as they see fit. He says the committee can model North Dakota’s standards after other states that withdrew from Common Core.
"This bill allows that interim committee to look outside of our borders to see what other standards are out there that other states have used, where excellence in those areas have been achieved until Common Core has come along. When we have a one size fits all standard for the whole nation, it's easy to see that one size does not fit all.
Kasper invited Sandra Stotsky to testify in favor of his bill. Stotsky is a Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Arkansas, and served as part of the nearly 30-member validation committee of the original Common Core. Stotsky says she and four other committee members could not sign off on the standards, and refutes claims that the standards are “rigorous.”
"They were not internationally comparable or benchmarked to the best out there, they're not research based - and I know the academic research very well because that is my background - and they are not rigorous, despite the fact that you might hear that word used over and over again parrot-like. Common Core standards will retard your students for the best 21'st century jobs."
North Dakota’s Superintendent of Public Instruction Kirsten Baesler opposes the bill. She says the state’s membership in the group Smarter Balanced – which collaborated on the Common Core standards and tests – made North Dakota educators and administrators directly involved in the creation of Common Core standards. She says this bill undermines the efforts of North Dakota’s own teachers.
"You have in your hands hundreds of names of educators who have contributed to both the standards work and the assessment work. Again, I say - people from your districts, from your communities. I ask you: are you really going to tell them their work isn't worthwhile? And that a group of legislators and their appointees, or their contractors from out of state, can do a better job for your students than they can?"
Baesler says 40 other states have adopted the Common Core, and states that chose to opt out have developed their own standards modeled after the Common Core.
The committee took no action on the bill.